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Explanation of the Preface to the Tafsir of Ibnu Abi Hatim ar-Razi

شَرْحُ مُقَدِّمَةِ تَفْسِيرِ ابْنِ أَبِي حَاتِمٍ الرَّازِيِّ

This short treatise is available in Arabic. This page explains what it is about and how it is structured, and lists its chapters. Its preface has been translated into English in full.

What It Is About

Ibnu Abi Hatim ar-Razi, who lived from 240 to 327 AH (854–938), was one of the great imams of Hadith and of al-Jarhu wa-t-Ta'dil, the science of judging the reliability of narrators, as was his father Abu Hatim before him. In his large Tafsir he collected, each with its Isnad, what the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم, the Sahabah, the Tabi'un and those after them said in explaining the Qur'an. He began it with a short preface in which he set out his aims and his method.

This treatise quotes that preface in full and explains it. Brief as the preface is, it shows how the early scholars collected Tafsir, which narrations they chose and how they passed them on. Before the explanation itself, the treatise introduces Ibnu Abi Hatim, describes his Tafsir and its printed editions, and discusses a question that troubles many readers today: the editors of these editions often grade the chains of narration as weak. The treatise shows how the Salaf dealt with such chains. They were strict in matters of what is lawful and unlawful, but in Tafsir and in the virtues of deeds they accepted narrations with a slight weakness, under certain conditions. Many narrations of Tafsir also come from well-known written collections, which were judged as a whole rather than narration by narration.

Structure and Approach

Translation of the Arabic Preface

In the name of Allah. All praise is due to Allah, and may blessings and peace be upon the Messenger of Allah, his family, his Companions and all who follow him.

The whole science of Tafsir rests on the explanations handed down from the first generations of this Ummah: the Tafsir of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم, of the Sahabah, of the Tabi'un and of the Atba'u t-Tabi'in. The Salaf recorded these narrations in their collections of Tafsir, and sometimes they added what a fourth generation, the followers of the Atba'u t-Tabi'in, passed on from those before them. All of this together is called at-Tafsiru l-Ma'thur, the transmitted Tafsir.

One of the greatest works that collect these narrations is the Tafsir of Ibnu Abi Hatim ar-Razi (240–327 AH). What sets it apart is that its author, like his father, was a leading imam of Hadith and of al-Jarhu wa-t-Ta'dil. He began his Tafsir with a short preface in which he explained what he set out to do and how he went about it. Short as it is, it contains important and useful information about how Tafsir was understood in the first centuries and how it was passed on.

In later centuries, people moved further and further away from the Tafsir of the Salaf and relied on their own understanding of the Book of Allah, and on that of other later scholars like them. This took them away from the way the Sahabah رضي الله عنهم understood the Qur'an, though no one understood Arabic and the Qur'an better than they did, or knew better what it aims at, why its verses were revealed and everything else that helps to understand it.

Whoever understands this will see why words like those Ibnu Abi Hatim wrote at the beginning of his Tafsir deserve attention. People urgently need to understand the methods of the first Mufassirun and how the scholars of the Salaf handled the narrations of Tafsir. This matters all the more because for some years now, to their credit, more and more people have been turning to the statements of the Salaf, including what they said in Tafsir. Yet ordinary Muslims, and even students of knowledge at the beginning or in the middle of their studies, sometimes find it hard to understand what the Salaf said in Tafsir, how to read it and what the speaker meant.

Here people go to one of two extremes. Some put others off reading the books of the Salaf, and their books of Tafsir in particular. They say that these books cannot be understood at all and that they contain things most people today can do without, such as the narrations from the Children of Israel. Others say that anyone with a little Arabic and some general knowledge of Islam can understand the statements of the Salaf, and their Tafsir in particular. Whoever knows something of the sciences of Tafsir and has spent even a little time with the Tafsir of the Salaf knows that the truth lies between these two.

So yes, Muslims must not be put off the books of the early scholars; they should be encouraged to read them. At the same time, it should be clear that a deep understanding of the methods of Tafsir and of the Mufassirun, and of the principles of Tafsir in the first centuries, is very hard to reach in these late times. Ignorant people like us, living so long after the time of the Salaf, are glad of every piece of their words we manage to understand that tells us something about these important matters.

This shows why the prefaces to the works of Tafsir in particular deserve attention, and that is the purpose of this treatise. I ask Allah, the Exalted, to make this short treatise and its comments on the author's preface beneficial, and a step towards a deeper and fuller understanding of Tafsir as the first generations of this Ummah understood it. Amin.

Written by
Abu Hamzah ibnu Musafir

The Chapters